The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
You were of little use when there was anything to be done. Nothing remains now. Go. Leave me.'
The Count, glad to escape an atmosphere of so much discomfort, mumbled 'Monseigneur!' and took his departure, closing the door softly.
The Regent sat on. Every now and then he uttered a long, shuddering sigh, provoked by the memory of the terrible indignity he had suffered, by contemplation of a plight so sad that he was no longer sheltered from insult.
At long length he rose, ponderously, wearily. He stood in thought, his chin in his hand. His breathing grew steady, his heartbeats normal again. He began to recover his composure. Confidence returned. It would not always be thus. God would never permit a Prince of the Blood to live out his life in such circumstances. And when sanity was restored to the world, and each man was returned to his proper place in it, the Marquis de la Guiche should be fittingly schooled in duty and be made to pay for his presumption.
It was a heartening reflection. It made him square his shoulders, raise his head again, and resume his normal princely carriage. And it must have brought back to him the memory of that interview above-stairs so brutally interrupted in so very promising a moment. For quite suddenly, with a shrug that seemed to cast off every preoccupation, he quitted the room, crossed the outer chamber, and once more ascended the stairs.
The landlord, watching him with curiously speculative eyes, observed that he trod lightly. He continued to watch him until he had entered the apartments of Monsieur de Kercadiou. Then with a shrug the landlord went to snuff the candles.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE CITIZEN-AGENT
It must have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Christmas—his notes are not precise on the point—when André-Louis left Paris on his journey into Picardy, there to assemble the material for the master-stroke by which he now confidently counted upon smashing Saint-Just.
'If you succeed,' de Batz had said to him at parting, 'the end will be in sight. While you are gone, the battle between Danton and Hébert will be fought out. The issue of that struggle is foregone. Hébert will be crushed. The Hébertists will go the way of the Girondins, and the ground will have been cleared for the final struggle for supremacy between Robespierre and Danton. Bring back the means to pull down Saint-Just in shame and disgrace, and Robespierre falls with him, torn down by a people who will by then have lost all their illusions. Before the trees are budding again in the Tuileries Gardens, the throne will have been set up once more and you will be celebrating your nuptials at Gavrillac. So to it, André, with all your courage and all your wit. You carry Cæsar and his fortunes.'
He carried them in a berline down to the little town of Blérancourt in the Aisne. He travelled, of course, as an agent of the terrible Committee of Public Safety, armed with unimpeachable credentials, and he was accompanied by the Colossus Boissancourt, who went with him in the guise of secretary.
His travelling-carriage drew up before the principal inn which until lately had been known as the Auberge des Lys. This, however, being a sign too closely associated with the royal standard, had recently been changed to the Auberge du Bonnet Rouge, and a Phrygian cap had now been painted over the fleurs-de-lys which had clustered on the old escutcheon.
André-Louis had dressed himself for the part with studied care. 'I take the stage in character,' he had informed Boissancourt. 'Scaramouche never had a worthier rôle. We must not neglect the details.'
These consisted of a brown frock, tight-fitting, and none too new; buckskins and knee-boots with reversed tops; a tricolour sash of taffeta, which he had carefully soiled; a neck-cloth loosely knotted; and a round black hat displaying a tricolour cockade. Saving that there were no plumes in his hat, and that he had replaced by a small-sword the sabre usually affected, he had all the appearance of a representative en mission, which was the impression that he desired to create without insistence.
With the massive Boissancourt rolling solemnly after him, he swaggered into the inn with all that truculence of manner which distinguished the revolutionary officials, those despots of the new régime who modelled themselves upon their worst imaginings of the despots of the old.
Authoritatively he announced his quality and condition, presented Boissancourt as his secretary, demanded the best rooms the landlord could afford him, and desired that the Mayor of Blérancourt and the President of its Revolutionary Committee be summoned at once to attend him.
He made a terrifying stir with his short, sharp sentences, his peremptory manner and his penetrating glance. The landlord bowed himself double in servility. Would the Citizen-Emissary—he knew not how else to call him, and dared not be so familiar as to call him merely Citizen—deign to step this way. The Citizen-Emissary would understand that this was but a poor house. Blérancourt was little better than a rustic village. But such as it was the Citizen-Emissary could depend that the best it commanded would be placed at his disposal. To conduct him, the bowing landlord moved backwards before him as if he were royalty. He protested as he went. His rooms were not such as he could wish to offer the Citizen-Emissary. But the Citizen-Emissary would recognize that he was a poor man, after all, just a country landlord, and perhaps the Citizen-Emissary would not be too exigent.
The Citizen-Emissary, following the retreating, cringing vintner along the narrow, stone-flagged passage, addressed his secretary.
'How times have changed, Jerome! And how much for the better! You perceive how the inspiring principles of democracy have penetrated even to this poor little rustic town. Observe the amiable deportment of this good landlord, who now fills his lungs with the pure air of Liberty. How different from the base servility of the old days when the despots stalked through the land! Oh, blessed Liberty! Oh, glorious Equality!'
Boissancourt blinked, and choked down his laughter.
But the landlord smirked and grinned and cringed the more under that commendation, and so bowed them into a small square room whose window opened directly on to the courtyard. It was a sitting-room. It was commonly used as a dining-room for travellers desiring to be private. But, of course, during the Citizen-Emissary's honouring visit, it would be reserved entirely for his own use. A bedroom connected with it, and, if the Citizen-Emissary approved, there was another bedroom across the passage which might serve for the Citizen-Emissary's secretary.
The Citizen-Emissary took a turn in the room, surveying it disdainfully, his nose in the air. The walls were white-washed. Some few pictures decorated them. The great man from Paris inspected them. One was a reproduction of David's Death of Marat. Before this the Citizen-Emissary bowed his head as if before a shrine. Another was an entirely apocryphal portrait of Doctor Guillotin. There was a print of the Place de la Révolution with the guillotine in its midst, and a legend under it: 'The National Razor for the Shaving of Traitors.' There was a portrait of Mirabeau, and a cartoon representing the triumph of the People over Despotism—a naked Colossus with one foot upon a coroneted and another upon a mitred homunculus.
'It is very well,' said the Citizen-Emissary. 'If these represent your sentiments, I felicitate you.'
The landlord, a mean, shrivelled little fellow, rubbed his hands in gratification. He grew voluble on the subject of his principles. The Citizen-Emissary, rudely contemptuous, interrupted him.
'Yes, yes. No need to protest so much. I shall see for myself while I am here. There is a good deal I desire to see for myself.' There was something minatory in his tone and smile. The landlord observed that his eyes were bitter. He fell silent, waiting.
André-Louis ordered dinner. The landlord desired him to be particular.
'That is for you,' he was told. 'We have travelled, and we are hungry. See that you feed us in a manner becoming servants of the Nation. It will be a test of patriotism. After dinner I will see your Mayor and the President of your Committee. Let them be warned.'
A wave of his hand dismissed the cringing rascal. Boissancourt closed the door. He subdued his deep, booming voice to mutter: